Little Battles (15 page)

When Elliott took a deep breath, I focused on his face. He put his hand on my cheek, brushing my hair back before it was actually there.

“Y-you’re sssso b-beautiful, S-S-Sophie.”

Suddenly, I was very far from Elliott’s room…

It was dusk and despite the air being on, my room was way too hot and humid after baking in the Florida sun all day. It was stuffy and uncomfortable.

He was touching my face and it was almost painful. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t want him to touch me because the very nearness of him caused my blood to grow icy, making the heat of my room contrast with my incredibly cold body.

Shivers involuntarily assaulted me and I swallowed hard against the fear this man created by simply touching my cheek the way he was. His seemingly tender action would only shift into its polar opposite soon. It confused me, and I had no idea if I was supposed to feel comfort from him, or if I should anticipate the moment when he would change.

Because it was going to come.

When he spoke, it was like millions of fire ants crawling up my back. I hated his voice. I hated the feel of his breath across my skin. I wanted to move; I wanted to jump off of my bed and run for the door. I wanted to hide in the closet or under the bed, even though I knew that I was too big and that he would find me. I wanted to run out the front door and never come back. I wanted to run all the way to Maryland. I wanted to make him stop touching me like that, but I couldn’t move, because, as usual, my body had shut down and it was all I could do to keep my heart beating and my lungs breathing.

So I was trapped inside my body as I waited for him to do what he always did.

But I so desperately wanted him to stop touching my face.

“Mmm. You are so beautiful. Did you know that, Sophie? Do you know how simply beautiful you are?”

I shook my head, my mouth unwilling to move, to talk, even if I had the voice to speak.

“Smile for me, Sophie. There’s nothing to be sad about.”

I smiled like he told me to, but it wasn’t real. I couldn’t even remember what a real smile felt like.

He rubbed his thumb over my lower lip and I looked away until I found the crack in the drywall. A small spider had set up shop there, its webbing covering the corner.

“There, that’s better.” Both of his incredibly large hands cupped my face, his thumbs stroking my lips. “Now open your mouth a little.”

“Please,” I finally whispered, not knowing exactly where the courage to speak had come from. “I don’t want to.”

He shifted my face so that I couldn’t look at the happy little spider hidden away in its little crack. I had to focus on his mouth.

“Don’t make me tell your mother how bad you’ve been, Sophie. You know she doesn’t like it when she finds out exactly how bad you really are.”

I tensed and held my breath. “But it…” I stopped speaking as he put his hands in my hair, his fingers tightening.

I blinked rapidly, my hand immediately coming up to bat Elliott’s away from my face.

“Stop fucking touching my face.”

He sat up straight, looking panicked and scared. “I-I’m sssssssorry.”

I felt so sick. I didn’t want him to look at me like that, but I couldn’t stop him. My stomach churned and clenched. All of my muscles ached and I realized how tightly coiled they were.

With every ounce of energy I had, I launched myself off of his couch and flung open the door, which was quite tricky because Elliott always locked it. Across the hall, I found the bathroom and emptied the dinner I’d just eaten into the toilet. Even after my stomach was empty, I kept heaving.

When it finally stopped, I rinsed my mouth with water, then swished several times with the mouthwash I’d found on the counter. The burn of the acid felt good against the raw portions of my tongue and cheeks.

I opened up the medicine cabinet and found the Mecca of prescription drugs. There were shitloads of brown bottles packed into this tiny little cabinet. I searched through them until I found some with names I knew. Then I played eeny-meeny-miney-moe for which one I would actually take.

When I had the two large white pills in my hand, I downed one, not even needing water to get that shit into my belly. The other one I crushed up with the handle of someone’s green toothbrush and snorted that shit as quickly as I could.

I pocketed a few more pills, not enough for anyone to notice they were missing right away, and then I sank down to the floor to wait for the numbness to kick in. It was going to kick in hard. I knew that. I wanted that. I
needed
that.

As
he
whispered in my ear to be quiet, I vaguely felt bad for breaking my promise to Elliott, but I needed that man’s voice to get the hell out of my head, because I didn’t want to be quiet, and I wanted to stop feeling his ghost fingers tickling my cheek and rubbing over my lips.

I sat in Elliott’s car, staring at Tom’s house for far too long. Whatever the hell I’d snorted had hit me like a ton of bricks and all I wanted to do was sit still and become a tree. My body rooted itself to the passenger seat. That shit had effectively taken away all thoughts of whatever it was that I didn’t want to think about.

But as I turned to look at him, knowing that he knew I was high now, the disappointment pushed through that blissful numb. I was trying to be good for him, but I wasn’t good. I wished he’d just go away. Why couldn’t he just figure me out and decide that I was too messed up for him? I’d broken my promise and I knew that Elliott would never break any promise he ever made. Especially not to me.

He didn’t hide from the bullshit, he saturated himself in it. He was so much stronger than I was.

“I’m ssssssorry.”

“What?” I asked, my chest feeling heavier than it probably should have. “What are you sorry for?”

Holy shit, the look in his eyes made me want to cry. Would I even be capable of crying? I’d stopped that shit a long time ago and I wondered if I had any tears left to shed.

“I’m fucked up, Elliott.” I nodded slowly. “I’m fully aware of that. Are you?”

“Am I-I-I fffffff…”

“Are you aware that I’m fucked up?” Elliott’s eyes danced around my face until he nodded, looking ashamed of his admission. “Then you should be running away from me.” He shook his head. I took a deep breath. “So what are you sorry for?” I asked as I bit the inside of my cheek.

“I upset y-you. I shhhhouldn’t hhave t-t-t-t-t…”

If it was possible, I felt even shittier because someone like Elliott was worried that he’d upset me because he’d touched my face. If only I’d been a normal girl! He deserved a normal girl. A girl who could let herself be touched. Who
wanted
to be touched. A girl who didn’t think about messed-up shit all the time. A girl who wasn’t too wrapped up in her own pain to give a shit about anyone else.

He deserved more than me. He deserved better than me.

“Elliott,” I said, trying to calm down so I wouldn’t upset him further because I hated when he looked so lost and panicked, “
I’m
the screw-up here, okay? You didn’t do anything to cause me to…” I licked my lips, not really wanting to talk anymore. “I have to go now.”

“W-w-w-why did you get hhhigh?”

I wasn’t about to tell him about the feel of that man’s breath on my cheek. I wasn’t going to talk to him about the way my skin crawled when I thought of that man with the short brown hair and the skull tattoo. “Will you come over tomorrow after I get off of work?”

He nodded.

“Good,” I said softly before forcing my lethargic and sedated body to move, getting out of his car, and shutting the door behind me. As much as I wanted to be with Elliott, it was sometimes too much.

He made me feel good, and sometimes it was just
too much.

Before I hopped out of Tom’s car in the parking lot of the Quickshop, feeling like a total schmoe in the god-awful uniform, I turned to him. “Elliott’s coming over tonight, so be nice, okay?”

Tom looked at me, eyeing me closely. “Sure, okay. Of course I’ll be nice. I like the kid just fine.”

I looked at him for a moment, wondering if he knew that calling him names didn’t convey liking him “just fine.” “You call him a ‘delinquent,’ Tom.”

He sighed and looked away. “You don’t have much of a sense of humor, do you?”

“Say something funny and maybe I’ll laugh.”

He ran his hand through his hair. “The kid had one parking ticket, and no arrests or citations. I was being sarcastic.”

“Oh.”

I could have pointed out that had I known him better, I might have caught the sarcasm, but I left the conversation where it was.

“Have fun today.”

“It’s work.”

“You can’t have fun at work? It’s a part-time job, Soph. Doesn’t the Simons girl work here?”

As I nodded, I already had my hand on the handle, eager to get out of the SUV. “She’s a cashier though, and I stock.” I pushed open the car door and then stopped. “So you promise you’ll be nice to him and won’t try to intimidate him, right?”

He sighed, but wore a smile and said, “I promise.”

I’d only worked one other day and that was nothing but computer training and safety videos. My fat, balding manager who kept looking at my boobs assigned me to work with this guy named Brody.

I really wish he hadn’t, because Brody was
fine
, all blond hair and scruffy beard. He had to be in his early twenties and I had no idea how he got stuck in Damascus stocking groceries in this crappy grocery store.

So needless to say, I had to keep myself in check because all I did was think about how sexy he was and how easy it would have been to pull him behind the pallet racking and jump on top of him.

Instead I stocked some shit, watching him out of the corner of my eye, and thought about Elliott. It was because of him that I wasn’t jumping on Brody-the-hottie-stock-boy. I wanted to be good for Elliott, but I was growing incredibly frustrated by the lack of humping in my life.

“I can’t use the baler,” I said as the tall, gorgeous guy waited for me to shove the cardboard into the big machine. “It’s stupid. I don’t think a few months will make a difference, but they seem to think that I shouldn’t operate it or use a box knife until…”

He looked at me, his dark hazel eyes moving over my body. “You’re not eighteen?” I shook my head, wishing like hell that I was. “Damn,” he said quietly. “That’s too bad. You look like fun.”

The only thing I could do was give him an embarrassed smile because
he
looked like fun too, but he thought I was too young and I
was
somewhat attached to Elliott in some weird, entirely too-involved sort of way, so the fun wouldn’t be happening.

Which was really a shame because Brody’s hands were sexy and I wanted to see what they looked like cupped over...Damn, I had to stop this train of thought.

“Yeah, I used to be fun, but, um, I’m reformed.” I shook my head and chuckled a little. “Or at least, I’m
trying
to be reformed.”

I glanced at his watch, which was upside down from my perspective. We’d been working for a few hours. “Do you party?”

He finished throwing all of my cardboard boxes into the large brown container, slammed the cage door closed, pushed the button, and suddenly the back room was filled with noise. “I’ve been known to.”

“I have some bud. We could go burn one. I can get an apple from Produce and make a little pipe out of it.”

Brody smiled, swiveled his stocking cart around, and came to stand next to me. Leaning down a little, he said, “You’re a bad girl, aren’t you, Sophie?” I bit my lip. I did say I was
trying
to be good. “You should work harder on the reforming thing before you claim to be reformed, yeah?”

Like I needed this hot guy to tell me that I was a screw-up at trying to be good. “So is that a no, Brody, or are you just…?”

“Maybe after work, but I need this job and I can’t lose it because I went and smoked weed during my break.”

Fine. I didn’t need him to get high with me. “Whatever, but I’m going, so I’ll see you in fifteen.”

When I got back, we stocked the baking aisle. I was covered in flour and had I not been high, it would’ve pissed me off. We talked on and off about random things. He told me he was a surfer, and was only stocking shelves to save money to move to California where he wanted to surf professionally.

He rolled his eyes when I asked if there was such a thing as a professional surfer, or if he’d really just be a waiter at some crappy restaurant who surfs on his off days.

“Who the hell surfs in Maryland?”

“I do.”

“Where?” I asked incredulously, thinking that he was clearly delusional. People in
Maryland
did
not
surf. People in
Florida
surfed.

“Ocean City.” He gave me a smirk.

I shook my head. “Don’t look so pleased with yourself, Stock Boy.”

His smirk grew. “I’ll try, Girl-Who-Puts-Things-On-Shelves.”

He was fun and funny, easygoing, and natural. It was safe to say that I liked Brody.

The rest of work was boring and despite sexy Brody for company, I was excited to get back to Tom’s. I took a quick shower and did some food prep before Elliott came over. I’d taken another one of those pills that I lifted from Elliott’s medicine cabinet. I really just wanted pot, but it was freezing outside and Tom would have thought it was weird if I just decided to go for a walk in the twenty-degree weather.

The meds kicked in right before Elliott knocked on the door. It was a good thing, actually, because the second I saw Elliott, the night before came crashing in around me. He had touched my face and I had flipped out. I could see the ramifications in his eyes. They seemed to gut me with their intensity.

I couldn’t just stand there with the door open, staring at him all night, so I grabbed his hand and pulled him inside without verbally greeting him. His fingers were cold. He reached up and pulled off the stocking cap that had been covering his dark rusty hair.

Dear god, he was beautiful.

He was tense and I looked around and found Tom standing there just looking at him. I glared at my father, figuring that even if he wasn’t meaning to, he was intimidating the shit out of Elliott.

I huffed and then heard Elliott try to push out a hello. It was painful to listen to, and I could only imagine what it felt like for him. Like I’d said before, his stuttering didn’t define him, but it certainly wasn’t comfortable to listen to him stumble over such simple words as “hello, Mr. Young.”

Tom was focused on where my hand was still connected to Elliott’s and I immediately felt self-conscious and let go. I mumbled a “come on,” and walked toward the stairs, fully intending on enjoying Elliott’s company in my room with less of Tom’s stare to make me feel weird.

“Make sure you keep your door open,” Tom said as I led Elliott away. He wanted to be a parent now. I supposed he’d heard that shit on TV one time and thought that was what he needed to say in order to be a good father.

Once inside my room, I closed and locked the door. “B-b-but your d-d-d, f-fffather said—”

“It’s
my
room, Elliott,” I said, cutting him off a bit more sharply than I’d intended. I always shut and locked my door and I would continue doing so whether or not I had Elliott in there. I contemplated shoving my computer chair under the knob like usual, but figured my guest might think it was strange.

He sat down in the rocking chair like last time, and I sat down on my bed. There was too much physical distance between us and I wondered if he’d panic if I asked him to sit on the bed with me. If he did panic, I could run my hands through his hair and breathe in his amazing scent.

I subtly pressed my thighs together. It had been too long since I’d had sex to start thinking about what Elliott would look like with sex hair. The smell of soil and oranges
had
to be an aphrodisiac.

“Hhhhhow w-was w-work?”

I smiled at him and ran my hands through my hair, wishing they were his. “It was good.”

“D-do you lllliiiike it?”

“Yeah, it’s all right.” Although I didn’t really want to talk about working at the grocery store, I also didn’t know what else to talk about. I mimicked something Brody had said today. “I put shit on shelves.”

I felt tense as I warred within myself. I enjoyed Elliott far more than was safe. I wanted to put my hands all over him and
feel
him, but I also wanted to do all of the things I had never allowed myself to do before, like
kiss
him.

Yes. I wanted to kiss him. Not just kiss him because he was sexy as hell and I wanted to do a laundry list of things to him, but because he was sweet and smelled good, and was quite possibly the only person in the world worth spending time with.

It wasn’t that I’d never kissed anyone before, because I’d kissed too many people too many times, but it all led to sex and I hadn’t actually ever wanted to
just
kiss someone. I wanted Elliott like that too, but there was a part of me that wanted to know him in the most innocent of ways. I’d kissed him before, but I wanted to do it for the right reasons this time. I wanted to kiss him to know what the inside of his mouth felt like and whether the chemical exchange between us was heightened when it was our tongues touching and not just our hands.

Innocent things scared me. What was it like to kiss someone delicately and then go eat dinner? What was it like to hold someone’s hand for hours while watching a lame movie? What was it like to feel the tingling, nervous sensation in my gut and not turn it into a sweeping, tingling sensation lower in my body? What was it like to just simply like a boy?

I wanted to kiss him again. His lips were so beautiful. They felt nice. I knew they were capable of unleashing amazing things within me. I wanted our lips pressed together as I closed my eyes and got swept away. I wanted to feel what all of those books and movies and television shows had sold me when I was a kid.

Kissing could be enough, right? Wallace said that small intimate moments like a hug or a kiss could be even better than sex. I didn’t know if I believed her, but I was willing to do some scientific research to figure it all out.

Kissing Jason or Ian, or whoever, was different. With them it was a lead-up to doing
it
, to feeling good, to having some kind of physical release to mask my mental chaos.

But with Elliott, my physical need for him was overshadowed by my
emotional
need for him.

I wasn’t sure how much I liked that.

I feared it.

I knew it was stupid for me to like him as much as I did. It broke almost all of the carefully constructed rules I had placed upon myself a long time ago. It undermined my entire mission in life, which was to just slide through the cracks unnoticed. He knew shit he shouldn’t know about me, and I was the idiot who had handed it to him.

But I couldn’t deny the way my entire being
ached
for him.

I needed him in ways that I probably shouldn’t have.

I was overcome by the desire to suck his lower lip into my mouth and test its fleshiness. “Can I kiss you?” I asked before I was even aware I opened my mouth. “Please?”

His breath caught for a moment before he looked at the door. Was he scared of me? Should I not have asked? Was he scared of Tom?

“He’s not going to come in,” I assured him. Tom never came into my room. “I just want to kiss you,” I admitted quietly. “It’s…” I paused and said the next word a little
too
breathily, “innocent.”

I sat perched on the edge of my bed, just waiting for him to give me some kind of answer. If it was a yes, I’d fly to him, but if he said no, I didn’t know what I would do. It would be uncharted territory, since I’d never asked a guy if I could kiss him before and who knew what I’d do if
this
guy said no.